The Making Of A Nurse

The bestselling author of A Nurse’s Story is back with more insider stories. Tilda Shalof has been a caregiver all her life—at home for her family, at work for strangers—but her skills didn’t come easily. From when she was a child taking care of her sick parents to her current position on an ICU team in one of Canada’s largest hospitals, there have always been daunting challenges and worthy rewards for her work. With her trademark humour, unflinching honesty, and skilled storytelling, Shalof describes her experiences becoming the capable nurse she is today. After graduation from nurse’s college, finding no jobs in Toronto, Shalof travelled to Tel Aviv, Israel, to work in a hospital for the first time, finding adventure and young love in the process. A summer stint as a camp nurse came with requests for condoms, strange allergies, and overly protective parents. The Making of a Nurse contains these stories and much more, and they are comforting, entertaining, shocking, funny, heart-warming and heart-wrenching. From hospitals to home care, they will give readers a glimpse into the life of a nurse and the hidden medical world.

The Making of Nurse Professionals: A Transformational, Ethical Approach is a philosophical inquiry into the current state of educating nurses in ethics and professional identity formation. The authors propose a visionary, grounded framework for the transformation of students into nurse professionals that is inclusive of virtue ethics and character development. The Making of Nurse Professionals is a clarion call to shift from a narrow student-consumerist paradigm to one of civic mindedness and recognition of duties to society and the discipline. Through this new vision, the professional life moves beyond just following rules and becomes one of flourishing and professional growth.

The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was known as “Laura’s Line.” They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also caring and incredibly committed to their jobs. Laura set the tone with her quick remarks. Frances, from Newfoundland, was famous for her improvised recipes. Justine, the union rep, wore t-shirts emblazoned with defiant slogans, like “Nurses Care But It’s Not in the Budget.” Shalof was the one who had been to university. The others accused her of being “sooo sensitive.” They depended upon one another. Working in the ICU was both emotionally grueling and physically exhausting. Many patients, quite simply, were dying, and the staff strove mightily to prolong their lives. With their skill, dedication, and the resources of modern science, they sometimes were almost too successful. Doctors and nurses alike wondered if what they did for terminally-ill patients was not, in some cases, too extreme. A number of patients were admitted when it was too late even for heroic measures. A boy struck down by a cerebral aneurysm in the middle of a little-league hockey game. A woman rescued – too late – from a burning house. It all took its toll on the staff. And yet, on good days, they thrived on what they did. Shalof describes a colleague who is managing a “crashing” patient: “I looked at her. Nicky was flushed with excitement. She was doing five different things at the same time, planning ahead for another five. She was totally focused, in her element, in control, completely at home with the chaos. There was a huge smile on her face. Nurses like to fix things. If they can.” Shalof, a veteran ICU nurse, reveals what it is really like to work behind the closed hospital curtains. The drama, the sardonic humour, the grinding workload, the cheerful camaraderie, the big issues and the small, all are brought vividly to life in this remarkable book.

Nurse: Past/Present/Future examines the culture of nursing on all levels, from its historical development to its status today. The book highlights the power and the value of nurses worldwide and traces the evolution of nursing as a career. There are currently 35 million nurses worldwide, they make up the majority of hospital staff and provide more primary care to patients than any other class of healthcare provider. There is a shortage of nurses in the UK, USA, Canada and a number of other developed countries. Currently only 20% of the nurses in Europe are male, encouraging the stereotypical view of nursing being a female profession. Nurse: Past/Present/Future opens with a look at the importance of nursing to health systems and economics across the world, including the impact of nurse migration patterns on employment demographics. This opening chapter includes a forward-looking essay exploring the prospects and pitfalls of workforce mobility. The second chapter traces the evolution of the nurse’s social standing, appearance, education and skill set, and examines some of the key debates now underway. These are put into context with a look at how nursing has progressed through the twentieth century in response to changes in medicine and society. The focus then shifts to the workplace: looking at the vast number of settings that nurses practice in, from patient homes to war-zone triage and from high-tech hospitals to call centres, and how the current developments taking place in these settings are redefining how nurses work now. The relationship between nurses, doctors and others involved in healthcare is discussed, exploring the working dynamics in previous and current generations of nurses with a contribution looking at nurse-doctor relations in twenty-first century patient care. Lastly, the final chapter traces the trajectories of a selection of nurses in order to convey the aspirations, opportunities, frustrations and accomplishments that define their careers. Beautifully illustrated, comprehensive and global in scope, Nurse is the first book of its kind, dedicated to the past, present and future of the culture of nursing.

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In Making Room in the Clinic, Julie Fairman examines the context in which the nurse practitioner movement emerged, how large political and social movements influenced it, and how it contributed to the changing definition of medical care. Drawing on primary source material, including interviews with key figures in the movement, Fairman describes how this evolution helped create an influential foundation for health policies that emerged at the end of the twentieth century, including health maintenance organizations, a renewed interest in health awareness and disease prevention, and consumer-based services.

This work explores the interplay of complexity and values in nurse education from a variety of vantages. Contributors, who come from a range of international and disciplinary backgrounds, critically engage important and problematic topics that are under-investigated elsewhere. Taking an innovative approach each chapter is followed by one or more responses and, on occasion, a reply to responses. This novel dialogic feature of the work tests, animates, and enriches the arguments being presented. Thought-provoking, challenging and occasionally rumbustious in tone, this volume has something to say to both nurse educators (who may find cherished practices questioned) and students. Given the breadth and nature of subjects covered, the book will also appeal to anyone concerned about and interested in nursing’s professional development/trajectory.